OLPC to dual-boot Windows & Linux after new Microsoft deal

After the surprise withdrawal of Intel from the OLPC board (taking their money, technical support, potential chip supply and order-poaching salespeople home with them), news comes from the Negroponte camp that they've been working on adding dual-boot Linux and Windows XP to the laptop.

Although there were rumors that the device would run Windows early last year, at the time it was dismissed and any cooperation between Microsoft and the OLPC team denied. Now, talks are apparently in progress with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation regarding incorporating the OLPC machine in the educational programmes Microsoft runs in developing countries, with Windows XP already operating "very fast" on the XO1.

It's a move that could dismay the Linux and open-source communities, who saw the OLPC - and its use of the Fedora OS - as a poster-child for the transparent software movement. Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC, described Microsoft's newly-grown affection for open-source development as key to the change.